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A blog for concept artists, designers, illustrators and art students. As an art teacher and freelance artist, I share insights of how I work, class notes, inspirations and design principles. Feel free to stick around and contribute!

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I'm starting with a new project to create a better portfolio to send to card game publishers.

I take a name of a playing card, I'm using Magic 2012 here, and I try to create my own image just by reading the description and not by looking at the image that comes with the card. This is the best way if I don't want to be influenced by the images already created for the card.All cards will be land cards, so this means only environment pieces for now, because that is the area I want to specify in right now.

This is my third card finished for my Own Magic Card Project. Like my previous cards, Swamp and Mountain, I started with quick color thumbnails. I wanted to create a low to mid key image with a lot of details in the lighter areas.

I decided to work the third one out, it seemed like a good base to work further on. I was already thinking of having skulls and broken tiles in the water to enforce the feeling of there was some kind of pathway in the past. But adding details are saved for later. First I had to make sure the right mood was set by adjusting the values. The details in the light had to pop which would create a nice contrast with the deep dark shadows.

I was still struggling to get the colors right. Finally I decided to go with a dark blue and green because this card produces either blue or black mana. I added a tint of green to keep the ghostly feeling we liked so much. The water falling down from the ceiling soon became a small waterfall and would serve great as a focal point.…

Like always, I started with some small thumbnails. You can do these in black and white or in color. I prefer working directly in color, otherwise, when I have to add color later on, it looks too Photoshoped for me. Try both ways and find out what works the best for you. There is no good or bad way.

To improve your working speed, it's a good idea to place your different thumbnails on the same canvas or even in the same working file. That way, you can work on them simultaneously. It's easier to color pick and even use the clone tool to make some nice feeling of textures while cloning.

The thumbnails I created looked fairly boring and they didn't had the red color for which mountains stand in Magic. People were correct when they noticed that the mountains looked too peaceful. I changed the color palette and refined the thumbnails more. At that stage,…